 |
| Stephen Meyer: Haunted by the ghosts of the enlightenment and mired in a vicious double-bind |
In the last part of my critique of North American Intelligent Design (NAID) pundit Granville Sewell I criticized the God-of-the-Gaps theology which subliminally underlies much of the thinking of the NAID community. I also said that they will vehemently deny that theirs is a God-of-the-Gaps stance. Given this denial I thought I would have a look at some of their attempts to refute this accusation starting with NAID pundit Stephen Meyer (pictured above).
Firstly, let me get one thing clear: "Intelligence-of-the-Gaps", rightly interpreted is a rational scientific position: We use it when we attempt to detect the works of non-transcendent intelligent agents like, humans, hominins, animals and even aliens (*1). The problems arise, however, when God-of-the-gaps tries to masquerade as intelligence of the gaps and therein lies my case against the NAID community. The Christian Omnigod not only transcends creation but His claim to being creator of everything, everywhere & everywhen makes God-of-the-gaps impossible to conceive.
Anyway let's have a look at what Stephen Meyer has to say about God-of-the-Gaps. The following quote from Meyer was taken from this post on Science & Culture.....
Stephen Meyer Debunks the “God of the Gaps” Objection | Science and Culture Today
....and here's the quote (My emphases):
STEPHEN MEYER: God-of-the-gaps
arguments use gaps in scientific explanation as indicators, or even proof, of
God’s action and therefore of God’s existence. Such arguments propose divine
acts in place of natural, scientific causes for phenomena that science cannot
yet explain. The assumption is that if science cannot explain how something
happened, then God must be the explanation. But the danger of using a
God-of-the-gaps argument for the action or existence of God is that it lacks
the foresight of future scientific discoveries. With the continuing advancement
of science, God-of-the-gaps explanations often get replaced by natural
mechanisms. Therefore, when such arguments are used as apologetic tools,
scientific research can unnecessarily be placed at odds with belief in God.1
The recent Intelligent Design (ID) movement highlights this problem.
MY REMARKS
1. Philosophical background
Well, like Stephen I disagree with God-of-the-gaps thinking but his mode of expression betrays a subliminal philosophy I would take issue with; the problems in the above are with the subtext and the NAID thought forms behind that statement. For a start, look at the way Stephen has casually mentioned "scientific explanation", "natural scientific causes" and "natural mechanisms" as if he and everybody else knows what he means by these terms. But these terms may hide a multitude of conceptual sins.
Scientific "explanation", so called is, all said and done, about successful description. This descriptive role really takes off when the providential organization of our experiences and observations is such that they become the data dots that can be joined together using succinct mathematical algorithms. The rational repleteness of this highly logical world of experience and observation is so consistently ordered that it allows us to not only define the gritty world of so-called matter but also of cause & effect; it's the kind of world for which the connotations of the term "mechanism" is so apposite. In this connection we note that above Stephen has used the term "natural mechanisms".
But it is clear that cause & effect and the notion of matter are derivative concepts that can only be conceptually synthesized as a result of the particular structure of the mathematical algorithms which control the organization of our experiences and observations. Matter and cause & effect are contingent upon the particular form of mathematical relations which as far as we know could be otherwise; they are not, apparently, logical truisms. The synthetic nature of cause & effect becomes clearer when we encounter the apparent randomness we find in quantum mechanics (QM): In order to come to terms with QM and restore old fashioned cause & effect determinism hidden variable and decoherence theories have been developed. The desperation in the quest to bring back a thoroughgoing cause & effect determinism is evidenced in those multiverse theories; the last resort of the mechanical paradigm. Notions of cause & effect are so entrenched in our thinking that when we encounter randomness such as we find in QM we still believe there to be underlying deterministic cause & effect patterns and that the cosmos is after all an autonomous enlightenment automata; this is an a priori philosophical commitment to the algorithmic simplicities of high order, but because this is apparently a synthetic position we can at least imagine cases where it fails to work (*2).
Scientific description then is a method of mathematical encapsulation facilitated by cosmic order. The bad news for a thoroughgoing scientism is that this description has a mathematical limit and ultimately leaves us with a kernel of irreducible mathematical brute fact. One response to this situation is, I suppose, that of atheists Bertrand Russell and Galen Strawson who have told us that the universe "just is". In this atheistic context the cosmos itself has nudged out the notion of divine eternity to be replaced by an eternal insentient machine (*4).
There is, however, an instinct in us which rebels against the idea that scientific "explanation" only amounts to contingent but succinct mathematical descriptions. Metaphysical instincts whisper to us that this observable cosmic order merely runs on top of a deeper (logically true?) ontology and that science actually points to something real about the ontology of the "thing-in-itself". In this connection, let's look at how Google AI responds to the prompt "Principle of Sufficient Reason".
The
Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) states that everything must have a reason,
cause, ground, or explanation for why it exists and is the way it is. [1, 2, 3]
Under
this view, there are no true "brute facts"—meaning nothing happens or
exists completely without an explanation. [1]
Core Concepts
· No Uncaused Events: Every contingent fact (something that could have been otherwise)
requires a sufficient explanation for why it is true. [1, 2, 3]
· Intelligibility: The universe is assumed to be fully understandable in principle; if we
lack an answer, it is a limitation of our knowledge, not a lack of a reason in
reality. [1]
This response, as far as it goes, does not make it clear that the universe may be fully understandable in terms of mathematical description but in spite of that completely allude us when it comes to the question of that mysterious sufficient reason. Perhaps the universe does have an underlying causative ontology; we have strong instincts that it does(*6). But we can't be dogmatic about that as we don't have access to the thing-in-itself - our only access is to our experiences and observations and at best science is a descriptive method which exploits cosmic organization but which struggles to arrive at a logical truism(s) explaining the whole caboodle. For a Christian such as myself this is where God's self-revelation is needed. But I suspect that the enlightenment idea of a machine working relentlessly and independent of any management by sentient intelligence will be held onto dearly and will be difficult to dispel; it starts as deism and then potentially eventually morphs into atheism.
****
2. Stephen Meyer
It is at this point that the response by Stephen Meyer becomes explicable. He uses terms expressing a malaise which has hung around in our culture since the enlightenment and at the same time he's put himself in a double bind as has the whole NAID community.....
The NAID community is repulsed by the deist-atheist axis and they seek its antidote. The best antidote they've come up with is to make a distinction between mindless blind mechanical normalcy (or as Stephen has put it those natural mechanisms) and intelligent agency. But reading between the lines Stephen appears to have in his mind the old deistical enlightenment thought forms; that is, those dreaded natural mechanisms which hint at the possibility of an autonomous automaton of a universe; the very notion he seeks to refute. And yet Stephen knows that God-of-the-Gaps is a blind alley as he makes clear in the quote above. What he doesn't make clear is that successful scientific "explanation" is a form of description which exploits cosmic high order by inventing mathematical models which successfully join the dots of observation.
As I have so often said, at the heart of so-called scientific "explanation" is the mother or all "gaps"; the gob-smacking kernel of contingent information which inevitably science will leave us with, begs the question: From whence comes this seemingly arbitrary cosmic organization which allows science to compress cosmic data into very effective mathematical algorithms and then leave us at a breath-taking logical hiatus? That hiatus leaves us with a meta-design question about the origins of cosmic contingency. But is this question even meaningful? Should we expect a better answer than the best that atheism can do, which as we have seen, simply tells us that the cosmos "just is", and is probably eternal: Their "god", if you can call it that, is the cosmos itself; but it is not a god which addresses our deepest existential aspirations.
The super-meta-gap of science is of a different genus to the in-house design questions which arise when we see flint tools, the monoliths of Gobekli Tepe or monoliths on the moon, apparently material configurations which likely point to non-transcendent intelligence. It is the failure of NAID philosophy to make this distinction between in-house intelligence and transcendent intelligence which has forced the NAID community toward a God-of-the-gaps anti-evolutionary position; for the NAID community evolution smacks of blind natural forces and therefore it must be opposed. Consequently North American ID has become so closely identified with anti-evolutionism that "NAID" has become a metonym for anti-evolutionism.
But if evolution has occurred it is clear that it would require very careful choreography and design, as I've already remarked. Therefore if we believe in an Omnigod the question of whether such an evolutionary system has been designed and contrived is a significant question that forces itself onto the theological agenda. Evolutionism can't be automatically written off on the basis that we believe in an intelligently designed cosmos; that's the trap NAID has fallen into.
****
The NAID community are in a double-bind: They must reject God-of-the-gaps thinking and yet at the same time they perceive standard evolution to be governed only by "blind natural forces". For NAIDs those blind natural forces demand periodic divine input to drive natural history toward advanced life. They have saddled themselves with a blind natural forces vs. intelligent design dichotomy. But this dichotomy falls over on the theological stage. When we introduce an Omnigod who transcends space and time all logically possible possibilities become possible. As I've tried to make clear evolution (if it has occurred) requires considerable intelligence to implement. If evolution has occurred it cannot be classified as a blind natural force; in fact for the Christian there really is no such thing as natural forces if they have been created by an Omnigod.
I personally have no big stake in conventional evolution (*3) either way, as I'm not a biologist. In contrast the NAID community are vehemently anti-evolution as they have increasingly backed themselves into a corner whereby they must declare it as an impossible outcome of blind natural forces. This, I submit, is because a background of deistical thought forms have invaded their thinking: For the NAID community the blind natural forces (sic) of natural history are an incompetent creator. This commits them to the view that natural history is full of ID gaps and since I doubt they will put this intelligence-of-the-gaps down to the tinkering of in-house non-transcendent aliens they will be forced to default to God-of-the-gaps. It is ironic that after all that Stephen Meyer has said above it is conceivable that advancing evolutionary science could start filling in those many gaps in the account of natural history. Let me repeat the second half of the quote from Stephen....
But the danger of using a God-of-the-gaps argument for the action or existence of God is that it lacks the foresight of future scientific discoveries. With the continuing advancement of science, God-of-the-gaps explanations often get replaced by natural mechanisms. Therefore, when such arguments are used as apologetic tools, scientific research can unnecessarily be placed at odds with belief in God.1 The recent Intelligent Design (ID) movement highlights this problem.
......Yes, the NAID movement does highlight this problem; who knows whether or not advancing evolutionary science will fill the gaps that ID seeks to fill with God-intelligence-of-the-gaps! They are themselves vulnerable to the very criticism with which they criticize!
I repeat: None of this is to say that standard evolution has actually happened but the NAIDs have painted themselves into an anti-evolutionary corner and cannot get out without loss of face. They are highly impassioned on this subliminal God-of-the-gaps position. The NAID community is self-validating as they engage in mutual back slapping. Further, they have allied themselves with authoritarian right-wing power brokers. Thus, in North America so-called ID now takes us into a culture that is a combination of anti-evolutionism and right-wing politics; the NAID community also champion the right's anti-establishment views on vaccinations, climate change, sexuality/gender, "libertarianism" (sic) and other issues. The strong-arm leadership behind this right-wing politics helps the NAID community get even with those uncompliant bad boys & girls in the liberal academic establishment! (*5)
****
One person in the NAID community, however, who has come close to the kinds of ideas I talk about above is William Dembski.... Just have a look at this link:
How about that! But although he's not necessarily denying evolution he does point out that evolution must start with a burden of information. That is true because this equation...
Created Information <= Starting Information + Log (Time)
...means that unless we are dealing with a universe which uses expanding parallelism in some way, information is only generated very slowly with the logarithm of time.
Next time I might have a look at the following post on Science & Culture...
Footnotes:
*1 Examples: Crime detection, Archeological artifacts, flint tools, beaver dams, bird's nests, ant's nests, and the lunar monolith in 2001 Space Odyssey. One might also add embryo development, which works because of the intelligence built into the bio-mechanisms. These mechanisms constitute the Starting Information in the equation:
Created Information <= Starting Information + Log (Time)
*2 But the non-locality of QM is a big departure from Newtonian localized mechanical cause & effect.... "Spooky action at a distance!"
*3 But the evidence for Common Descent is strong although the exact mechanism's driving this engine of descent may be more debatable.
*4 See also this series:
*5 The academic community are far from faultless. Christian academics John Lennox and Amy Ewing-Orr both tell stories of attempts to silence their witness within academia. Dr. Ewing says in a recent article in Premier Christianity magazine: "There was an intentionality about identifying Christians who might have a public voice and taking them out". But then what do we expect: Academia is as full of epistemically and morally challenged sinners as is the NAID community. However, Christian biologists Dennis Alexander and Simon Conway-Morris suggest different stories can be told. This subject could do with a bit more research.
*6 I have a hunch that animals are far less curious & more inclined than human beings to accept that the natural status quo "just is" (As atheist Galen Strawson puts it). They therefore have little urge to ask more questions. Perhaps it is this curious questioning instinct which is distinctly human and is responsible for much human striving for the numinous, the ultimate causative.
No comments:
Post a Comment